FDR would have been a Republican today.

A Russian poem

A couple of weeks ago my cousin from New York e-mailed me a poem in Russian. The poem was pretty good and reflected the feelings of pretty much every emigrant from the former Soviet Union I knew: the old country, in the form of Obama administration, is catching up with us. The poem was signed by someone named Alex Matlin of New Jersey. Although I like the poem, I was disappointed that it was in Russian and, thus, I could not share it with my non-Russian-speaking friends. So, I forwarded it to a bunch of my friends and suggested that they try translating the poem into English, if they were so inclined. One of them, Diana from Los Angeles, took a first crack at it. She sent me her version, and I improved on it the best I could. Then I googled the authors name and came up with his web site and contact information. I e-mailed Alex Matlin Diana’s and mine translation attempt. He tweaked it some more and sent it back to me along with permission to post it on my blog along with the picture of himself at the 9/12/09 rally in Washington, DC. Here is that picture below, along with both Russian and English versions of the poem. Note that if any of you, dear readers, decide to forward this poem to any of your friends, be sure to include the Russian version as well. It does not matter that you or your friends might not be able to read Russian. The fact that it was written in Russian originally makes it much more meaningful.